The Incompetent Witcher
by Zoltan Berrigomo
Summary: The School of the Wolf's newest graduate is its worst ever. Can he make his way in the world?
1. Chapter 1

This, then, was to be good-bye. Vesemir looked at his young charge, standing cheerfully before him in the overgrown garden and almost hopping from foot to foot.

"Show me your Aard," he said finally, gesturing at the nearby table. A few cups stood in the middle, leftovers from a hurried breakfast.

Thyssen furrowed his brow. He gazed at the table, bearing a look of the utmost concentration. Eventually he flailed his arms with great dramatic effect.

Had you, dear reader, been there to witness this scene, you would be forgiven for wondering if anything at all had occurred. But then one of the cups did begin to teeter, almost as if it were making up its mind whether to fall or not. Finally, it toppled onto its side.

Vesemir sighed. "How about your Igni?"

Again, the same furrowing of the brow, the same look of total concentration. Nothing happened for a few moments but, eventually, fire did shoot out of Thyssen's hands.

It was barely stronger than a burning match.

"What do you think that'll be good for?"

"Tea for one thing," Thyssen answered instantly. "It is quite a pain to make it out on patrol, you know. I cannot count the number of times my not inconsiderable talents allowed me to enjoy a proper brew."

Vesemir's wrinkled face showed no sign of amusement. "Boy," he said quietly, "do you think all this a joke?"

They looked at each other uneasily before Thyssen gave way.

"I do not," he answered seriously. "But we both know this examination is without purpose. My signs are atrocious."

At times like this Vesemir was given to wonder if destiny had a sense of humor. It was the only explanation, at any rate, for how Thyssen ended up a witcher.

In many ways, the boy's story was perfectly ordinary. One day his father had the poor fortune to lose himself in the woods; wandering haphazardly, he found himself in the middle of a bog, beset by rotfiends that appeared out of nowhere. A passing witcher saved his life. The law of surprise was invoked: Thyssen's father had promised to give up the very first thing that would come to greet him once he returned home.

Vesemir remembered seeing the boy as he arrived at Kaer Morhen, spectacled and awkward looking, with a head seemingly too large for his body; he had taken after his father who made ends meet as a record-keeper and a scribe. The older witchers looked the boy over and wondered if it was possible to send him back.

But everyone knows one does not quibble with destiny. To the witchers he was promised; a witcher, then, he would become.

At the time Vesemir did not think the boy would live very long. Fewer than three out of every ten boys survived the Trial of the Grasses, the act of consuming the decoctions that would reshape their bodies and give them the powers the witchers were known for. Inexplicably Thyssen did not perish, though he spent weeks in a coma and was bedridden for months. When he had finally recovered, the abilities he gained were slight compared to the other boys. His physique and stamina were above average thanks to the mutations, but he was no match for a professional soldier in battle. And now, after years of training, he had managed to hone his magical powers to such a degree that he could warm a kettle and knock over a cup.

Only his eyes, which had that unnaturally yellow feline glow, had mutated properly.

"I suppose you are right," Vesemir said with resignation. "We might as well move on."

He hesitated, wanting to to deliver a heavy warning before he sent the boy out into the world. But it was a fine spring day with everything in bloom, especially here, in the garden of the crumbling castle where the trees seemed to jostle for space. Birds were chirping loudly. The world itself seemed to contradict his solemnity.

"As every graduate from the School of the Wolf, you may take a steed from our stables," he began again. "You will also find there a bag with all you need to begin a new life. Provisions for a week of travel, a few coins. A chest of books: _Ritual Plants_ , _Physiologus_ , _Ghouls and Alghouls_ …"

"Ah, _Ghouls and Alghouls_ ," Thyssen smiled. "If I may say so, master Vesemir, I've always thought of that work as primarily metaphorical. The ghoul clearly represents the savage nature of man, lurking beneath the veneer of civilization. Now as for the alghoul…"

"Enough!"

Vesemir glared at the boy before sighing once more and continuing in a milder tone. "You are the most incompetent witcher I have ever laid eyes on. Please, _I beg you_ , do not seek out any witcher's work."

"Oh, master Vesemir." Thyssen's voice radiated equal parts of incredulity and emotion. "I assure you, that is the very last thing I would do."

They embraced warmly. Shortly thereafter, Thyssen unharnessed a black mare from the stables and set off on the overgrown path leading out of the castle gates.

He had spent a happy childhood at Kaer Morhan and was not eager to leave. The older witchers had always been kind to him and the younger trainees never taunted him or subjected him to cruel pranks. Likely they viewed him as something akin to a cripple. But his warm feelings for the witchers notwithstanding, he could hardly spend the remainder of his life enjoying their hospitality. Besides over the past few months all his classmates had grown of age, leaving one-by-one to hunt monsters for coin, and the place had begun to feel distressingly empty.

Riding out of the gates, he cast one final look at the half-ruined castle and promised to himself that, once he had made his way in the world, he would return. Most witchers wintered here during the snowy months when monsters hid in their lairs. Would it be too much to hope he would be back that very same winter?

* * *

Reader, you may be somewhat surprised to learn that as he rode out of the gates of Kaer Morhen, Thyssen had little notion of where he would go or what he would do. Surely, you will exclaim in disbelief, he had known for years he would be forced to leave once he became of age; how could he have given the matter so little thought?

If you are indeed puzzled, dear reader, I can only conclude that you have been blessed – blessed, that is, with the privilege of having very little to do with today's youth. The thought of being thrust out into the world was distressing to Thyssen and so he had simply kept it out of his mind. The older witchers had sometimes hinted this was a matter to consider at great length but I'm afraid it all went in one ear and out the other.

In this Thyssen was no different than youths anywhere: careless, insolent, disrespectful of their betters. Reader, I could regale you with choice stories of my own nieces and nephews, who dismiss me and my opinions with a sneery contempt until their wasteful ill-planning drives them to my door, entreating for my generosity. Invariably they leave with nary an oren from me!

But I digress.

For my part, I suspect Thyssen was the unwitting victim of a happy childhood. He had spent his formative years with his nose stuck dusty old books, of which there were more at Kaer Morhan than you'd expect. The basement of the castle housed a bestiary collecting much of what was known about the monsters that had been prowling the known world since the Conjunction, material which Thyssen eagerly devoured. The traders which passed through on the way to Aedirn often carried books with them and could be persuaded to part with those they had a hard time selling for a fraction of an oren. Thyssen had many fond memories of curling up with a book by one of the windows in the upper reaches of the castle, all the while the boys below him sparred and practiced their signs.

Unfortunately a happy childhood can ingrain the belief the world is a fundamentally good place where nothing really goes wrong in the end. If confronted with this notion directly, Thyssen would have denied believing anything of the sort; all the same, this belief was such an integral part of his psyche that he was almost completely unaware of its influence on his actions. Perhaps it would have been better if the witchers had mistreated Thyssen, if they subjected him to mockery and abuse. At least then he would have been better prepared for what awaited him when he rode out of the castle gates.

Whatever criticism Thyssen might deserve for his lack of sensible planning, I will say this in his defense: decision-making came naturally to him. No sooner had his mare reached the first crossroads than he had already resolved upon a plan.

He first thoughts were of a career as a knight. But while he had understood from his reading that knights enjoyed a particular popularity with the opposite sex, he also discerned that they ran a high risk of decapitation, dismemberment, and indeed many other gruesome causes of death. Besides, to become a knight one first had to become knighted which already seemed to present a near-insurmountable obstacle.

There were always the trades. He could apprentice himself to a weaver or a blacksmith. He knew how to read and write; he could become a scribe, as he knew his father had been. But all these sounded mind-numbingly dull and he rejected them without a further thought.

A travelling merchant, perhaps? The thought of seeing the cities of the Northern Kingdoms after a childhood spent at Kaer Morhan appealed to him. But when he thought of the men who stopped by to sell trinkets to the witchers every spring - when he remembered their rotund faces, greedy eyes, and a nearly endless propensity to haggle - he knew that his path was elsewhere.

For a few moments the situation seemed grim indeed but he soon settled on a perfectly acceptable plan: he would become a troubadour.

For one thing, there was little risk of death. He pictured a group of maidens, stately and beautiful, sitting at his feet with tears in their eyes as he sung his verses. He pictured them so moved by his words that they would reward him in the most meaningful way they knew…

In short, it was a brilliant idea and he mentally congratulated himself for thinking of it.

The only problem was that he had neither a lute (nor any other musical instrument) nor the skill to play it. Also he had never composed poetry before.

At the time, these seemed like minor obstacles at best. The books Vesemir had given him were of no use; he would sell them and perhaps there would be enough orens then to a buy a lute. He would find someone who could teach him to play it. As for his poetic abilities, he would start honing them at the soonest. That very afternoon, in fact!

Pleased with this course of action, he was startled out of his reverie when his mare suddenly came to a halt. The road forked. With some hesitation, he chose the path that would ultimately lead him to Oxenfurt, reasoning that it was at that renowned city that he would find the troubadours and performers that would eventually become his bosom companions.

And it is no accident, dear reader, that, consciously or not, Thyssen set off towards Redania. For is it not widely acknowledged that, in all respects, Redania is the pre-eminent among nations? That its wines are sweeter, its foods more savory, its poetry more tender of feeling? As the peasants say, even the cows in Redania are prettier than the women in Temeria, and they know whereof they speak.

* * *

Thyssen's afternoon on horseback was a productive one. The first task he set for himself was to come up with the right name for his horse. After all, did not every luminary or otherwise important personage have a steed whose name was somehow reflective of a noble nature and distinguished pedigree? Troubadours and knights favored flowery names, whereas witchers used short, matter-of-factly ones. Unfortunately, after an hour or two of closely observing his stallion, Thyssen felt no closer to finding a name which successfully encapsulated the horse's psyche.

Undaunted, he put the task aside and turned to what was arguably his most pressing concern: the composition of his very first epic poem. Before he could begin composing, he would need to decide what this work should be about. This proved surprisingly difficult, in part because he was not unaware of the gravity of the decision; centuries hence, scholars might debate the precise chain of literary influence which led to him to settle on whatever subject he would ultimately choose.

The nature around him was quite lovely, golden fields of wheat brimming in the sun, but it was the thirteenth century and panegyrics to the beauty of the natural world felt quite stale at this point. War was out of the question as well. Thyssen was well-aware that every troubadour in the Northern Kingdoms had recently composed a ballad on the miraculous victory at Brenna, coming at the cost of a great many lives, each and every one of them apparently a heroic one.

As he rode, his eyes were drawn to the peasants hard at work in the adjoining fields. It was the end of spring, the time of the wheat harvest, and the peasants were cutting the long stalks and shaping them into rolls. There was a rhythm and beauty to their movements, almost as if they were an inseparable part of nature itself. He imagined what his life would be like as a peasant: working with his hands all day, sitting around the flickering fire trading stories in the evenings, sneaking out for an occasional roll in hay. There was a charming simplicity to it all. Maybe he should consider becoming a peasant?

After a moment's thought, he rejected the idea as ludicrous. No – though he must remember to work in some observations on the advantage of the peasant lifestyle into his poetry, the purity and naturalness of it – but actually spending his life as a peasant was a preposterous idea, out of the question.

Returning to the subject of his poem, he soon settled on the story of a young witcher, perhaps one not so good at the witchery arts but nevertheless stout of heart; a witcher who, despite the cruel obstacles put in his way by nature, nevertheless hunted the most dangerous monsters and was beloved by a great many beautiful women, sorceresses and princesses among them.

He found the topic endlessly exciting and, without much in the way of difficulty, easily composed a few stanzas by lunchtime. They did not rhyme but presumably that could be fixed later.

Writing poetry turned out to be thirsty work and soon enough it was time to stop for a meal. Wishing to spend the time undisturbed, either working on his verse or finally determining the nomenclature of his steed, he turned off the road into a field of unkempt wheat and trotted some way inside it.

The stalks were tall, reaching higher than either him or his horse, and they seemed to rustle reassuringly in the wind. Oddly enough, though his future seemed to hang in the air, he felt a sense of joy at the freedom before him for the first time, a simple happiness at being alive. Settling down on the ground, he began to pull out the fruits and loaves of bread that were packed into his bag.

He was only half-way through unpacking his food when he was startled by sounds that seemed to be coming from not too far away.

"Get off me, you dirty bastard." It was a woman's voice, faint, but with notes of panic mixed with resignation. There was the sound of tussling and the ripping of clothes. "Help! Someone help!"

The cry was so weak that, had Thyssen stopped only a minute's walk from where he had paused to have his lunch, he would have heard nothing at all. Acting on instinct, he jumped onto his horse and set off in the direction of the noise. The sounds were coming from just over the edge of the field of wheat, behind a copse of trees. He had leaned forward and his horsebroke into a gallop.

There was a woman, he saw at once, bent over a fallen trunk. A man was positioned right behind her, a soldier still in his armor with his breeches pulled down to his ankles.

Thyssen slid off his horse smoothly not ten paces away. The man was in the process of turning around, startled by the sound.

"Draw your sword, fiend," Thyssen said menacingly. He stretched out his hands and made them glow with fire. "We shall see whether your plate can withstand a burst of the witcher's flame."

The man yelped in panic and, pulling on his pants, started to run in the direction of the wheat field. Unfortunately, he had not pulled them up quite fast enough and a few moments later he was sprawled on the ground. With a fearful glance back at Thyssen, he pulled the breeches high enough to cover his naked derriere and resumed fleeing.

"You done scared him off!" said the woman, sounding somewhat upset. She seemed to be of peasant stock, dressed in a collection of rags piled on top of each other.

"Fair maiden," Thyssen said grandly, "that villain sullied your honor through no fault of your own. None shall know of it, I swear upon my life! Your secret I shall take with me to my grave!"

Reader, here I must pause. As I have already related, in his childhood Thyssen had read a great many books. Perhaps I should add that Vesemir had been willing to spend a few orens on these for they gave the boy something to do; otherwise Thyssen would sit at the corner, making wisecracks and distracting the other recruits. There were some serious books among these, but there were also many stories about knights-errant and princesses and villainous mages. In short, somehow or other, Thyssen had come to believe this was how people talked.

"Oy! Didn't even pay all. Half after, he said, the little prick." The woman eyed Thyssen. "You wanna have a go? I'm a good actor, I am. You want me to pretend or scream a little, it be extra."

It was only then that it dawned upon Thyssen that there were, perhaps, a few things he might have misunderstood about the situation.

* * *

Later that day, as he was slowly sipping ale at a half-empty tavern, Thyssen reflected that it might be good to be mistaken for a real witcher. The trick with the flaming hands might be worth repeating. After all, it would take him the better part of a week to reach Oxenfurt and the journey would take him through some rough territory. He was still in the outer provinces of Kaedwen, not too far from Kaer Morhan, a long way from the court of King Henselt at Arg Carraigh; the villages that speckled the landscape here tended to be ruled dictatorially by headmen who obtained their positions through bribery or nepotism. It was not unusual to hear of travelers stripped of their belongings or even beaten for sport by village guardsmen.

Reader: as it was then, I regret to say, so it remains to this day; for the Kaedweni are known for their valor, not their expertise at administration and governance; and one is justified in wondering whether their courage would not serve a worthier purpose were it conscripted in the service of a _different_ power.

But I digress.

"Hey two-swords," someone giggled drunkenly behind Thyssen, "what you think you need two swords for?"

"You must have two pricks too," said another voice, deep set and dripping with rancor.

Thyssen dismounted from his stool and turned around. Two soldiers stood in front of him dressed in the Kaedweni motley of yellow and grey, one wagging a finger in his direction.

Clearly drunk and spoiling for a fight.

He opened his eyes wide so that his mutated yellow irises glinted brightly. "I'm a witcher," he said, affecting a friendly manner. "The silver sword is for ghosts impervious to steel." He took it off his back and pulled it slightly out of its sheath, letting the metal sparkle in the dim light of the tavern.

As expected, that scared them off. One spat sideways and the other muttered "freak" but both moved to the far side of the tavern. Once again, the witchers' reputation saved him. Thyssen sat back, satisfied with the way things had gone.

"A witcher, I hear that right?" The innkeep, a short, thick-set man with a bushy head of hair, appeared before him.

Thyssen gave him the briefest of nods and averted his eyes. He had no desire for conversation now, especially given that he would need to keep up the pretense of being a real witcher. Perhaps the man would grasp the hint and move on.

"Maybe I have a job for someone like you."

This was a problem. No witcher would turn away an offer of honest work.

"My services are not cheap," he said as haughtily as he could.

"Good," the innkeep said and motioned him to a nearby table.

He could not think of a way to decline, and so, picking us his ale, Thyssen sat next to the innkeep. There was another man in their table, a tall fellow with a narrow face and an expansive mustache dressed in Kaedwani armor.

"My name is Krzysztof. I own this tavern." The innkeep looked proudly at the decrepit walls, the rusty chandelier, the drunks at the corner yelping as they played dice. When Thyssen arrived here to rent a bed for the night, he was a little afraid the inn might collapse at any moment, so shaky did it look from the outside. But he had little choice, for a sudden deluge of rain began to pour hard and the roads had grown impassable.

"This is my brother Gregor," the inkeep continued. "He is a lieutenant with the village guard." The mustached man nodded in greeting.

"My name is Thyssen. Witcher, newly minted, School of the Wolf." He thought that sounded fairly impressive. "What job have you for me?"

"It's our grandmother," Krzysztof said, sharing a nervous glance with his brother. "We don't know what to do about her."

Thyssen looked at him incomprendingly.

"What my brother means to say is that she is dead. Three years in the grave."

"She is a ghost then?"

Gregor nodded. "White as a sheet."

"When did she appear for the first time?"

"A month ago," Krzysztof said. "One day, I went to the cellar to fetch some wine. It was then that I saw her. Hovering in the air, screaming at me." He shuddered lightly.

"I was at Brenna, you know," Gregor said coldly. "I've seen many things. Fields full of dead. I'd never flinch before an adversary." He took a swig from the glass in front of him. "But this…this is different. That….thing…should not be here."

"Ploughing ghosts," he concluded, taking another gulp of his ale.

Thyssen turned back to the innkeep. "And what was she screaming when you saw her?"

"The word `no.' It was very long and drawn out. Didn't even sound like any human speech I ever heard."

"I take it she been haunting you ever since?"

Krzysztof furrowed his brow. "In a way. I put a nice big lock on the cellar door. Still I hear her sometimes when I walk past."

"Damn shame," his brother added. "Some good wine down there."

"How did she die?"

"Old age," Gregor said quickly.

"Died in her sleep, she did," Krzysztof said almost simultaneously.

Reader, it is true that Thyssen was arguably the most incompetent of witchers; and yet he had spent his whole childhood among them. He had drunk ale with them late into the nights, sat at the table and listened to their stories. Perhaps he could not send an enemy flying with the wave of a hand or cause a ball of fire to erupt out of his arms; but he knew all the lore there was.

"You lie," he said simply.

Gregor stared at him maliciously.

"I cannot help you," Thyssen said as he rose from the table. Their story had given him a perfectly acceptable reason to turn down the job. "The dead do not haunt the living out of a sense of whimsy, you know. Spirits are born of suffering. If you refuse to tell me the whole story, I can do nothing for you."

He he already risen when Krzysztof caught his arm.

"Wait," Krzysztof said, pulling him back towards his seat and sharing a meaningful glance with his brother. A moment passed in silence before Gregor nodded. "Sit, master witcher," Krzysztof continued. "And please keep your voice low. Loose tongues abound. You must swear not to repeat anything said here."

"Witcher-client confidentiality," Thyssen said as he rejoined the table, sounding offended that the possibility had even been raised.

"The hag died of old age," Gregor declared. "But," he added in a half-whisper, "she may have been helped along a little."

"Ninety years old she was," Krzysztof added," and showing her time too. Kept forgetting who I was. Had to remind her all the time. At the end, she was constantly going on coughing fits. I knew she didn't have much time left."

After a moment's silence, his brother picked up the story. "Krzysztof ran the tavern for years but according to the ploughing paperwork, the old hag owned it." Gregor spat beside the table. "What a ploughing mess. Did you know that in Ofier, women don't own property? Just as it should be."

Thyssen made no response and Gregor continued. "One day, the old hag declared she would leave the tavern to her niece."

"Sixteen years," Krzysztof interjected loudly. His brother shot him an angry gaze and Krzysztof looked around fearfully. Fortunately, there was no one within earshot; besides some soldiers at the far end and dice players in the corners, the tavern was empty. "For sixteen years," Krzysztof continued more quietly, "I put my blood and sweat into this place."

"One day, she called for a scribe," Gregor continued, "and dictated a letter to her niece. Our cousin. Then she sent a boy to fetch the notary from a nearby village."

"The whore," Krzysztof added in disgust.

"He means the niece," Gregor explained. "Years ago she ran off with one of the servants here. A ploughing elf. We all disowned her."

A silence fell over the brothers and Thyssen felt he had to move the story along. "What happened then?"

Krzysztof began to answer but a sluggishness had entered his speech and he had to start over. "Be-before the notary came – we figured – so what? so what if she lives one more month, or not?"

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"So how did you do it?" Thyssen asked.

Krzysztof seemed to shrink from the question but Gregor looked him calmly in the eyes as he answered. "This isn't ploughing Oxenfurt. We're not scholars. We had an hour at the most before the notary came. We did the easiest way we could. Forced the hag to drink a glass of lantern oil."

"Krzysztof held her nose and I forced it down her throat. All there was to it. Croaked within minutes."

Thyssen nodded. He had heard of such stories often among the witchers, spectres given life by suffering and betrayal, human wickedness made into ghostly flesh. Some of the books he had read even cited their existence as proof that the maker of the world, whoever he may be, was not without a sense of justice, for did he not he ensure that man's sins would be visited upon him?

Only a detail or two remained unclear.

"That scream of 'no.' There must be some context here."

Even Gregor looked a little sheepish before answering. "She kept on trying to say `no' when we poured the oil down her throat."

"Last question. What happened a month ago?"

Both brothers looked at him incomprehendingly.

"Something must have triggered the ghost. What happened a month ago?"

"Nothing happened," Krzysztof said searchingly. "The niece to whom she would have left the tavern – our cousin – showed up a week before I first saw the ghost. Just got our grandmother's letter, she did. Came all together with her half-elven brood. We sent her on her way, of course. Didn't even let her stay here for the night. Could that be it?"

"Maybe," Thyssen said. It was still a puzzle. According to lore, something should have happened right before the ghost appeared.

In any case, it was a minor issue of no importance. He had asked all the right questions; the two men sitting before him clearly believed him to be a real witcher. Now came the real problem, the task of turning down the job. He had been mulling it over in his head as the conversation went on and thought he had hit on a simple and efficient solution.

"It will cost you three hundred orens," he said.

The number sounded astronomical to him. The pouch Vesemir gave him contained a measly five orens. His dinner and room for the night at this tavern cost a quarter-oren. He was certain they would refuse.

"And what will you do for that money?" Krzysztof asked cautiously.

"Get rid of the ghost, of course." The fewer specifics he offered, the better.

"Yes but how?"

Thyssen sighed. "The first step would be to descend to the cellar myself. It may be that a swipe of my sword is all that is necessary. But usually some sort of ritual is required. I shall know when I see the ghost for myself."

"Agreed," Gregor said quickly. "Three hundred orens it is."

"Brother…" Krzysztof looked astonished and began to say something, only to be cut off.

"I will find the funds," Gregor said.

Thyssen had to stop himself from gasping with shock. What had he gotten himself into?

"I want half up-front," he said, hoping it would prove too much.

"You will have it," Gregor said sharply. He turned to one of the soldiers at the far end of the tavern and snapped his fingers.

An hour later they were standing beside of the cellar door, Thyssen one-hundred and fifty orens wealthier, staring grimly at Krzysztof who was undoing the bolts hanging upon it.

* * *

He considered running away over the past hour. The tavern door was right there, and he could bolt through it and run into the fields of wheat surrounding the village. But what of afterwards?

He would be homeless, without any of his possessions. No doubt, the brothers would be astonished at first, but soon enough they would understand he was no battle-tested witcher. They would not be happy at having told him their dark secret. Gregor clearly had some soldiers from the village guard under his command and would likely marshall them to conduct a search. It was still pouring outside and he would not get very far on foot.

He would take his chances with the ghost, he decided.

Krzysztof finally removed the last bolt and the door opened with a creak. A dark flight of moldy stairs presented itself. Feeling his heart skip a beat Thyssen began to descend.

He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the screaming, the long prolonged sound of "no." He pulled out his sword and held it steadily before him, pausing a few times to steady his hands. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw the ghost itself, white and fluttering in the air, and the moment his feet left the last step it began moving ominously in his direction.


	2. Chapter 2

Let us take leave of Thyssen, just as he is about to take that last step into the cellar, and shift our attention to the city of Oxenfurt several months thereafter. It is now late fall and the leaves have turned a beautiful, almost radiant, shade of brown. The sweltering heat of the summer is long past and the streets are full of gentility pompously strolling about. All but the beggars are dressed in their most elegant finery; this season's fashions run to puffy caftans and knee-high boots for the men, plumed hats along with wide-rimmed glasses for the women.

But the character on whom we now bestow our attention is blissfully unaware of all this. He barely knows what century it is outside, let alone what season; in fact, he has not left the grounds of the Oxenfurt Academy in some time. Between the dining hall to take his meals, his bed to sleep in and the library to do his work, he has found litle reason to venture elsewhere. It is here, among fellow scholars and mages, that he feels the most at home.

His name is Natan and he is formally known as Natan of Kerack. It is not a mellifluous name and he has sometimes daydreamed about having been born in a place like Loc Muinne or Aldersburg; sadly, there is little he can do about the matter now. Since we are all friends here, I will henceforth refer to him only by his given name.

We come to gaze upon him just as he is about to conclude a phase of his life (and hopefully begin another) for he is about to graduate with the high title of Master of the Magical Arts - provided, that is, he can pass the exit examination which is about to begin. He fidgets nervously, standing at a podium in front of his examiners as they wait for the last of their number to arrive. While they wait, reader, let you and I chat, for there is much I desire to make known before the questioning starts.

You have, of course, heard of the Oxenfurt School of Magic. Added to the Academy at the behest of Radovid the Stern, that renowned civilizer of the northern continent, it has since become the pre-eminent magical institution in the world, far eclipsing the older schools at Aretuza and Ban Ard. Yet as Natan is anxiously waiting on his examiners, this venerable institution is in its infancy, comprising barely two dozen instructors and half as many students. Its success is by no means assured and to some extent hinges on what is about to transpire.

There is a tension about the room and Natan might be the only one unaware of it. It centers on one of his examiners, a woman wearing a scandalously low-cut dress and a puffy toque, sitting with her arms crossed and casting impatient glances out the window. She is unused to being made to wait. No doubt the most perspicacious among my readers will readily guess the personage I am describing, that famous sorceress and hat connoisseur Sheala de Tansarville.

The rest of the examiners steal anxious glances at her from time to time. Schools of magic have not been established at the behest of kings before; it is only the fear of offending that wisest among monarchs, His Majesty the King Radovid, that has prevented the Conclave from outright shutting down the Oxenfurt School of Magic. Sheala's presence constitutes the first time they have been asked to let an outsider examine their curriculum.

They view Sheala with a mixture of uncertainty and admiration, for she is so unlike them. All of them are wizened old men, used to spending their days among books and debating the fine points of magical theory. They shun politics and any kind of intrigue. By contrast, she is a woman; of great beauty no less; in the prime of her youth (though who can say what her true age might be?); and it is speculated that she spends her time pulling at the strings of kings. They suspect some nefarious purpose at the Conclave's decision to send her here.

Finally, the last of the examiners walks through the door. He is a frail old gentleman, habitually late due to his poor vision and unfortunate habit of getting lost in familiar quarters. The chair of the committee - a renowned by the name of Brennus of Bellhaven who happens to be the only man among them without a foot in the doldrums of old age - calls the meeting to order.

For the first hour Natan does quite well. He gives a perfectly satisfactory account of the relationship between the various dialects of the Aen Seidhe language. At the behest of one of his examiners, he brews a potion of stuttering and demonstrates its effectiveness by drinking it. The next few minutes are not very productive but no one seems to mind, except perhaps for Sheala who glances at the proceedings with impatience. A butterfly that has had the ill fortune to fly in through the window is transformed, via a complex ritual that takes the better part of the hour, into a puff of smoke, and then back again; terrified, it flutters madly about the room before finding the window.

Natan's confidence flourishes as the encouraging smiles from his examiners grow. A part of him even enjoys flaunting his erudition. After all, he has studied hard for many years, all in preparation for this moment; why should't he enjoy it?

Eventually all but Sheala, who has been keeping silent, find their questions satisfactorily answered. The rest of them turn to her expectantly. She smiles curtly, leans forward, and clears her throat.

"How do you breathe underwater?"

This strikes Natan as a rather odd thing to ask. "Well, a killer whale potions allows one…"

"Imagine yourself thrown off a cliff," she interrupts. "You haven't the time to brew potions."

"I suppose Roggeveen's Transfiguration can remove the bonds of hydrogen, turning water into air. Cast in conjunction with Vattweir's Funnel..."

"You are underwater," she enunciates. "The moment you open your mouth to cast a spell, water will flood your lungs."

"Hmmm," he says, scratching the back of his head. "There are levitation spells that can be cast with hand gestures alone. I could use one of them to push me to the surface…"

"...and into the hands of the very people who threw you into the water," she finishes, almost amused. Before he can reply, she moves on to the next topic. "You are being chased by a pack of hunting hounds."

There is a pause as they look at each other.

"I don't think I heard a question."

"How do you escape?"

"Hmmm. Open a portal?"

"Portals require several minutes to prime. Time that you do not have."

"How about a samum spell to blind them?"

"Do you know anything about dogs? They can find you by the sense of smell alone."

"An illusion, then," Natan answers, thinking he has found a satisfactory answer at last. "Ibn Rudwan's Duplico will copy my appearance as well as my smell. It is a quick spell, easily castable while running."

"That will only distract some of the pack. You will still have half of the dogs chasing after you."

He pauses to think about it. After she judges he has said nothing for too long, Sheala launches into the next round of questioning. "Your hands have been bound in front of you with dimeritium shackles. You are being led to your own execution. What do you do?"

Natan sighs. These are not the kinds of questions he should have to answer. "Profess my innocence?"

She meets this with a silent glare.

"Well, I suppose I can rely on verbal chants…"

"You are a fool if you think your guards will let you get out a syllable before breaking your teeth."

This is not going well. Natan decides to pause again and figure out the answer she really wants to hear. There are not too many possibilities and he begins to run through them, trying to guess what her response might be to each one.

Once again, though, he must have paused for too long. The next thing he knew she had thrown a fireball at him.

* * *

Reader, you will accuse me of lies or exaggerations and I quite see why; but, I vow to you, I speak the truth and only the truth; may my mother give birth to a goat if I deceive you.

In Sheala's defence, I will say that, first, she had good reasons for what she did, as will become clear in time; second, although our story takes place on Redanian soil, in Oxenfurt, a bastion of refinement and culture if there ever was one, the city of Tansarville from which Sheala hails lies in Creyden, and we can hardly expect the natives of that nation to be conversant with our codes of civilized behavior.

Natan was so surprised that he nearly froze. Time seemed to have stopped. His first thought was that this was only an illusion, something designed to give him a good scare; but the faint feeling of warmth on his skin contradicted that. This was a real fireball, he thought with a start, Meletile save me. Had he not the presence of mind to step aside, he may very well have been incinerated.

Acting on instinct he muttered the words of Assengard's Shield just before a second fireball slammed into it. He had no idea what to do. After a moment's hesitation, he ran for the door; a third fireball caught him as he was half-way there, his shield collapsing with a loud bang at the impact. The recoil pushed him onto the floor. Furniture all around the room was burning, charred pieces of it collapsing on the floor. His hand was suddenly caught beneath some rubble, and by the time he managed to pull it out, Sheala stood over him, fire shimmering in her hands.

The rest of his examiners seemed to be caught as unawares as he was. Some of them seemed frozen in place; others blinked as if they could not believe their eyes; most, though, had the presence of mind to hide beneath their chairs. Only Brennus was shouting something, though between the burning fires and the ringing in his ears, Natan could not make out his words.

Reader, I am happy to report that this is where Natan's distressing ordeal came to an end. After a moment, the fire burning in Sheala's hands disappeared; she whispered a few words and all the fires in the room went out instantly.

"Thank you," she said, strolling back to her chair. "Please step outside for a few moments while the committee discusses your performance."

There was a silence as they all stared at her.

"Incidentally," she added, "the Pompilus incantation, castable with gestures of the fingers only, will let you grow gills and breathe underwater for several hours. If you, like most mages, carry mana stones in your pockets, you might crush them to melt dimeritium. You should always wear rings primed to teleport you a half-mile straight ahead. Assengard's shield spell is notoriously weak when subjected to concentrated bursts of energy; try to layer it alongside the version developed by Cornutus."

Natan kept on looking at her in shock.

"I could have died…"

"My necklace - " she pulled it out of the folds of her dress "-disguises an amulet which can heal burn wounds. Had you failed I would have had you good as new."

"Now," she pointed to the door, " _do_ step outside while we discuss your performance."

Natan turned his outraged gaze to the other examiners, who had, by now, managed to seat themselves upon their chairs once more. Finding no support in their eyes, he turned and left the room in a huff.

* * *

This part was usually only a formality; one lounged awkwardly outside the door for a minute or two before a smiling member of the committee stepped out with congratulations. At least, this is what happened to all of Natan's classmates; and so Natan could be forgiven for wondering, after an hour of watching the closed door, whether he had been entirely forgotten about.

But eventually the door did open and Natan was politely asked to step inside.

The room was in the same state as when he had left it; broken furniture was strewn about and everything seemed in disarray. No one bothered with spells that would have set things upright, or at least removed the wood dust from the air. Only the row of chairs on which his committee members sat in tense silence was free of rubble.

Brennus cleared his throat.

"Having discussed the matter at length..." he stopped as if flustered, then began again. "After an extended discussion, we have come to the conclusion that your education has been deficient in some of the more practical aspects…"

He let the sentence hang in mid-air.

"What I mean is that we'd like you to do a final project."

"None of my classmates had to do a project."

"Indeed." Brennus looked away. "Nevertheless, we are instituting a new policy, I think. Beginning with you."

"And what is this project?"

"You must produce an unhatched dragon egg in two month's time," Brennus said apologetically.

Natan almost laughed. "You want me to defeat a dragon?"

"That is _one_ way to obtain a dragon egg," Sheala interjected.

"This is ridiculous."

"No," Sheala said coldly. "What is ridiculous is a magic school that trains mages who cannot venture outside a well-guarded library."

"Have you heard the news as of late?" she continued. "Gwydion of Nazair was killed in the street last week. Three alchemical stores were burned by an angry mob in Vizima, their proprietors hanged in public while the royal guard looked on. The Conclave meeting last month took place on a mountain top for fear of angry riots. Hardly a day goes by without an incident."

"I haven't faced any…" Natan began.

"Only because you've been shut inside a library."

In truth, what Natan was about to protest was a half-truth at best. Even he, cloistered as he was, felt the scornful looks his mage's robe provoked whenever he did venture into the city. Even when he was not cheated by merchants or elbowed by passing pedestrians, an undertone of disdain was present in every interaction. Only among the aristocracy was this absent; with them, he only felt the aloofness and scorn that came with his lack of station.

"You can escape these ill-tidings for a while if you continue confining yourself to the library," Sheala continued. "But the world will force you to face it sooner or later." She paused and, for the first time, looked at Natan with something approaching sympathy. "Dark times are coming, I'm afraid. Soon all our backs will be against the wall. Think carefully of the questions I asked. The right answers might one day save your life."

"Do you seriously expect me to defeat a dragon?"

"If you cannot pass this test, then for your own good you should eke out a living as a village herbalist somewhere. Not a mage."

And with that she turned and left the room, hopping gracefully over the furniture remnants as she did so.

"It is not an easy assignment, I know," Brennus said after the door had slammed behind her. "But we agreed because we have highest confidence in you."

"And because we had little choice," one of the examiners muttered, the same old man who made them all wait earlier.

"We cannot help you directly," Brennus continued, "but I will say this: think creatively about the problem. Do not go for the brute force solution."

Natan said nothing. They all stood awkwardly for a moment, avoiding each other's eyes. Naive as he was, Natan wondered why, given the evident sympathies of his teachers, they did not simply send Sheala back to whatever hole she came from. For years now he had looked up to these people. More than that, they were his idols. And here they had turned and betrayed him.

Once it became clear there was nothing more to be said, they all shuffled out of the room, leaving Natan standing. It struck him now that he was the only one in his class to fail the examination.


	3. Chapter 3

Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters...

At that time, at eighteen, drawing near the confines of illusive, void dreams, Elf-land lies behind us, the shores of Reality rise in front. These shores are yet distant; they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of spring meadows; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the roll of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think to hunger and thirst no more...

Charlotte Bronte, from _Shirley._

Reader, I have a revelation to impart and I fear it will be quite a shocking one. If you stand, now is the time to seat yourself; find a sturdy chair and place yourself squarely upon it, and look and see that you do not position yourself precariously close to the edge.

If, by some chance, you read this in public – I am told that the newfound popularity of the coffee bean has occasioned the constructions of houses dedicated solely to its consumption, and that much of today's youth pass their days in indolence within such places – then, I beg you, put these pages aside. Return to them only when you are in the quietness and comfort of your own abode, preferably after a filling meal fortified with a little sherry. A glass or two should suffice.

Reader, _ghosts aren't real._

Becalm yourself, reader, hold your tongue. I am no fool; I do not dispute that some ghosts are, indeed, just what they present themselves to be, the spirits of the recently deceased come to torment and plague the living. I merely maintain that, in nine cases out of ten, tales of otherworldly hauntings are mere figments of the imagination.

The peasant who tells you of sightings of children playing in the fields, the same children who perished during a bad harvest – the knight who regales you with tales of underground treasure, guarded by a barghest or a nightwraith or some other ethereal beast – the widow who insists she is in contact with her departed husband, many years in the grave – almost certainly, they lie or fool themselves. More likely, they give voice to their hopes and anxieties and imaginations. Only in the rarest of cases do their tales contain a kernel of truth within them.

And so it was somewhat anti-climactic for Thyssen, having grasped his sword and lunged at the wraith, to discover he was swinging at the empty air. He stared blankly until the cause of his vision was made plain. The tavern was built on a hill and the cellar had a small window through which the moon was visible. Reflected off the mirrors on the wall and seemingly hanging in the dust-filled air, at a casual glance it did look a bit like a wraith.

And the screams of which the innkeep had told him, and which he himself had heard as he descended down the stairs? Thyssen saw that a loose board in the wall, letting in the cool autumn gale, was responsible. As the wind blew through the opening, it made a sound not unlike the bellow of a badly-tuned horn. In retrospect, it did not at all sound like a scream of "no."

It now occurred to him that his witcher's medallion, which vibrated in the presence of magic and would have alerted him to the presence of ghosts, remained conspicuously still.

For a few moments he was overcome with happiness. Though his upbringing was not a religious one, he felt a strong urge to get down on his knees and thank some higher power for his good fortune. It was only uncertainty about which power he should be thanking that stopped him.

Instead he broke into a bout of giggles. He was alive, and was there anything more wonderful? He breathed in the air and, though it was mossy and damp and would have seemed revolting any other time, at that moment it felt light and sweet, almost like honey.

He was already sprinting up the stairs when a sudden thought brought him to a halt. How would the brothers react when he told them what he had (or, rather, hadn't) found? Certainly they would be happy at first, but what of afterwards?

They might demand their money back. That he was a witcher might give them some pause, but people tested themselves against witchers all the time, especially soldiers like Gregor who could likely rely on support from the village guard.

Fine, then; it was hardly fair but he would return their coin. But even that might not be enough. Gregor seemed like a dangerous man; would he want it known that he was scared into hiring a witcher by nothing more than a loose floorboard? Besides, the brothers had entrusted him with a dark secret, one that could very well ruin them. How much trust did people really have in the confidentiality of witchers?

For the sake of his own safety, he would need to project the image of a fearsome warrior, someone they would not dare challenge. Thyssen sighed. A solution presented itself, but it required a little bit of delicacy...

* * *

"You must follow my instructions to the letter," Thyssen declared as he emerged from the cellar. "Bring me the blood of a hen, slaughtered on the stroke of midnight; a scoop of black earth from your grandmother's grave; a full head of hair from each of you; four eyes of newt, a bed of nails, and the tears of a virgin."

"You want our hair!?"

"How do you expect us to find a virgin?"

"Yes, and figure it out yourselves," the witcher said carelessly. "Oh and I'll need all these by tomorrow."

"What do you intend to do with all that?"

Thyssen gave the brothers a broad stare. "It's best if you do not know."

They ended up spending the better part of a day fetching the items. The hen, taken from Krzyzstof's kitchen, was slaughtered that same night. A passing merchant happened to have quite a few nails for sale. They visited a barber on the next morning and emerged looking quite the worse for it, but with two hairpieces in tow.

They were forced to make a few alterations; minor things, really, but they worried Krzyzstof. His brother persuaded him to say nothing to the witcher. The newt was nothing more than an ordinary frog. The hen had indeed been slaughtered on the stroke of midnight, but Krzyzstof's watch, a cheap trinket he once obtained from a passing soldier in exchange for three chickens, always seemed to be a few minutes or hours off from the proper time. It was certainly dark outside when the hen was slaughtered but beyond that Krzyzstof could not guarantee anything.

The most difficult thing was the tears, for virgins seemed to be in very short supply. Gregor had insisted on using his daughter but, some days ago, Krzyzstof heard one of the lads in his kitchen boasting of having made some headway with the girl after the last solstice festival. What exactly was the definition of a virgin? Was virginity lost only in those acts which could sire a child or did other, perhaps lesser, actions suffice? He hesitated to go back to the witcher with follow-up questions of this nature.

In the end, he was able to forestall an awkward conversation by finding a vial of tears on his own. The witcher did not specify the sex, and so the virgin could presumably be male? He thus resolved the problem by forcing his stable boy to cut an onion. The lad smelled of horse droppings through and through and Krzyzstof was certain no girl had as much as touched him.

They presented the items to the witcher the following afternoon. He inspected them slowly, shaking the vial of blood and sniffing the tears. He declared most of the items adequate, though the earth was apparently not black enough and the eyes of newt were also wanting. Thus Krzyzstof was forced to trudge once again to the grave while Gregor lost some hours chasing amphibians in a nearby bog.

Finally, once all the items were deemed satisfactory, the witcher mounted the hairpieces on two broomsticks and sprinkled the virgin tears all over them. Apparently happy with the result, he glued a pair of newt's eyes to each broomstick and, holding these rather revolting contraptions in his hands, descended into the cellar once more, ordering that this time the door be bolted shut behind him.

For over an hour the brothers stood nervously as a horrid clamor was heard coming from below. They could make out the clang of metal upon metal, the sort you might hear in a battle of swords; piercing screams, mixed with the sound of wailing; and a strange bellowing which was unlike any sound they had heard and whose origins must have been otherwordly. But most of the time the sounds mixed together into some fantastical concoction, and they desired nothing so much as to plug their ears. Worst of all, their bare scalps itched terribly. Krzyzstof tried hard to stop scratching himself behind the ears, without much success.

Eventually the clamor stopped and not long afterwards they heard they witcher's voice on the other side of the door. When the bolts were dismantled, the witcher appeared looking battered but smiling nonetheless. His clothes were torn and he had a few minor cuts on his arms but was otherwise unscathed. Declaring their problem solved, he took them down into the cellar.

The mirrors were all cracked, the wine bottles broken, and the walls now had some large gashes. One of the boards at the side of the house was in pieces entirely. Nails littered the floor, many of them bent or partly melted. Their hair was spread all over the floor, some of it slowly drifting in the air, carried by the wind that was now coming through the hole in the side of the tavern. It was a little difficult to breathe.

But there were no ghosts around to be seen.

* * *

"To the tavern!" The three of them raised their glasses. It was some kind of Zerrikanian brew that miraculously remained untouched by the destruction in the cellar: strong, spicy, with notes of apricot and plum, though it did burn terribly going down.

"To the witcher!" Krzyzstof exclaimed as he poured the next round of drinks. "Well done, master, well-done!" They clinked their glasses and emptied their contents. "Yes, well-done, sir," Gregor added. "What would we do without witchers?"

Having examined the empty cellar and calmed their nerves, the brothers seemed positively giddy. What a contrast to their state a mere hour ago when they shivered listening to the sounds coming from below.

Another toast was made, this one to their grandmother. No longer was she the old hag; now she was their sweet nana and they wished her an easy passing to the next world. The brew was going down a lot easier and Thyssen wondered if he had burned off the pain receptors in his throat. For some reason, he found the thought of this strangely amusing.

"You look a wee bit like our cousin," Krzyzstof said, squinting at him. "Doesn't he?" He turned to Gregor. "He's got the same mould of face as Kaczimir!" Gregor said unenthusiastically that indeed that was the case.

Another toast was made, though Thyssen found he had no notion of what it was for. He tried to refuse, but the brothers had poured the fiery liquid into his glass and he had no choice but to drink up. Something was said and he started laughing. The brothers laughed with him but after a moment he realized that he had no idea what they were all laughing at.

The world turned wobbly. He found himself slumped on the floor. It was as if his body ceased to obey him. Images from his life swam over him.

One moment, he saw himself back at Kaer Morhen, walking out in anger as he watched Vesemir teaching the rest of the witchers to dominate a wolf with the Axii sign. His own Axii had allowed him to control mice or bees, nothing bigger, and he had wasted many hours trying to force a stray cat to look out the window. He was not usually so ham-handed with his emotions, having come to terms with his own deficiencies long ago. Still, seeing the other witchers learn to dominate the wolf in mere minutes made him suddenly emotional, and he felt the overwhelming urge to leave the room and go anywhere else.

The next moment he saw himself as a child, rushing out the door to throw his arms around his father, having heard the beating of horse hooves that announced his arrival. He saw himself as he was back then, or must have been, for he was too young to remember well: yelping, full of excitement, jumping at his father and hugging one of his legs, not understanding the look of pale shock on the man's face.

And then he saw himself, older and middle-aged, sitting out on a the balcony above a busy street. It felt almost as real as being there. He breathed in the night air and felt the coolness of it in his lungs. A fantasy or a prophecy? He did not recognize the city before him, it was a jungle of roofs and tiles of every color of the rainbow, with vines and greenery elegantly curled all around.

A woman with soft, light blue eyes sat by his side, reading from a letter. When he looked at her, she lifted her glance and smiled at him. He could feel the affection within her gaze and it was as if he melted within her smile. He felt lost in the pleasantness of the scene. It was almost as if he were immersing himself in a warm bath.

And then it had all blended into one, he was in Kaer Morhen and his father's village and that strange city simultaneously, a boy and middle aged at the same time, and there was no conflict, no contradiction behind it all, it made sense in a way that could not be explained in words...

* * *

It was quite a shock to find himself suddenly awake.

How much time had passed? Where was he? It felt as if he was sprawled out on a piece of furniture, maybe a chair. Something was awkwardly jabbing him in the rib. His joints were hurting and he felt too weak to move.

"Sure he won't wake?" the voice was unmistakably Krzyzstof's.

A grunt was heard in reply. "The dose I gave him would knock out a horse."

Thyssen tried to wiggle his toes. A jolt of pain rang through his body but the toes did move. His body, at least, was beginning to respond to his commands. He dared not open his eyes.

"Bloody shame," he heard Krzyzstof once again. "Fine lad he was."

Another groan was heard, this one of frustration. "Not the time, brother." It was clearly Gregor speaking, his voice a near-hiss. "Fine lad, you say. Want to gift him three-hundred orens?"

"No."

"Shoulda taken you with me to Brenna. That woulda toughened you up."

Thyssen considered his options. He could probably take on the plump innkeeper in a fight but Gregor would make short work of him. What could he do?

"Toughness isn't jus' slipping a knife between the ribs. Which one of us poured his ale?"

"Not to mention," Krzyzstof spit aside, continuing after a short pause. "It was _me_ who explained to _you_ what to do about the old hag. Me. Without me, you woulda jus' rolled over."

"All right, all right," Gregor said peaceably. "Lets drop it."

"Lets," was the curt reply.

After a short silence, Gregor sighed. "Don't fret brother. Those things, those mutants - they aren't human. He may look like you and me but he's nothing like us."

There was no reply and shortly afterward Thyssen heard the sound of coins jingling on a table. "Five ploughing orens," Gregor said. "Whose ever heard of a witcher with five orens in his purse?" A loud cling seemed to indicate one of the coins was thrown against a wall.

There was another silence, this time a very long one. Thyssen tried to breathe as evenly as possible.

Finally, one of the brothers spoke. "It's long after midnight. We've waited long enough."

Thyssen suddenly found himself pulled over someone's shoulder. He relaxed his body, willing every muscle to slump as best he could. The man lifting him - judging from the wheezing and grunts it must have been Krzyzstof - did not seem to notice anything amiss.

The door creaked and, a moment later, Thyssen felt the night air run over him. His steed neighed, likely sensing his presence from the stable. It was still raining, though the downpour had been reduced to a strong drizzle, and he could hear Krzyzstof walking through puddles, emitting many moans and curses as he did so.

"Wait here," Gregor said. "I'll see that the roads are empty."

This was his chance, the moment that fate had presented him. He would have no other like it.

Thyssen waited until Gregor's footsteps had receded into the distance. With all his might, he swung his right leg to hit Krzyzstof in the groin. Jumping to the ground, he hit the innkeeper once again, this time in the gut, as hard as he could; then he turned and sprinted to his horse.

Had Vesemir been there to witness this, I dare say he would have been pleased with his former charge. A hard blow to the stomach to knock the wind out of a foe; obvious as this may be, it turned out Thyssen had not completely ignored all there was to be learned at Kaer Morhen. Who knows what would have become of Thyssen had Krzyzstof been able to call to his brother for help?

As it was, the innkeeper lay on the ground helplessly for a few moments, then staggered to his feet and tried to yell something; but no sound to came from his lips. When he had finally regained his voice, when Gregor had run back and seen what had happened, Thyssen was already horseback and galloping out of sight.

He turned off the main road and into a thick jumble of woods as soon as he was out of the village. He could speed through the forest in spite of the darkness thanks to his mutated eyes while his pursuers would be reduced to a trot. So he rode through the woods all night, whipping his horse into a state of near frenzy.

It was well into morning when he finally stopped.

Muzzling his horse with his hands, he paused and stood for a few moments, listening. The forest was alive with a cacophony of sounds: the flowing of the brooks, the cheerful chirping of the birds, the uneven rustles of leaves in the wind. But there was no beating of horse hooves, no sound of dogs on the prowl. He was not being followed.

Relieved, angry, grateful, feeling himself to be an incoherent jumble of emotions, he collapsed on the ground in a state of nervous exhaustion, falling soon into a deep sleep that lasted all through the day.

* * *

In truth, he did not need to abuse his horse quite as much as he did. The darkness put him out of sight and the rain washed away his tracks. Had Thyssen bothered to think things through, he might have realized after an hour or two that his escape had been entirely successful. As it was, he only came to terms with that evening, when he finally rose from the forest floor.

His horse, having rested and recovered, was calmly munching on grass nearby. Mounting it, he rode towards the flickers of light - the day was nearly over now and darkness was just beginning to descend - and after an hour or t wo, he was out of the forest. But he did not follow the pattern of lights to its source, doubtless some small hamlet beside the woods; after orienting himself, he set off in the direction of Oxenfurt once more

This time he avoided all roads and settlements, following instead one of the tributaries of the Pontar until it brought him to the gates of the city. He slept in the fields, ate berries and fruits, soon depleting the pouch of food Vesemir had given him. It was a monotonous trip but at the very least the fish that frolicked within the waters of the Pontar made no attempts to kill him.

Later he would remember those days as happy and carefree but this was not at all how they seemed at the time. With the sun at his back and only the gentle breeze to divert his thoughts, his mind jumped from subject to subject like lightning. His trip took almost a week, all time spent without hearing human speech, and the feeling of silence that came over him had grown to seem rich and cleansing.

As his journey continued, he found himself growing more and more uncertain about his plans. He recalled the verses of the poem he had composed only days ago and found himself wondering whether they would be of interest to anyone beside himself. Besides, he now felt his attempt at poetry produced lines that were a little too light, a little too cheerful. There was a hint of falseness about them.

Reader, I am sorry to report that Thyssen spent most of his trip brooding. The young do so love to brood, vainly imagining that it heightens their attractiveness. This belief is not wholly without foundation, for there are far too many featherbrained women who mistake misery for depth and think melancholy to be a sign of soulful intensity. As it was then, so it remains to this day, and so I suspect it always will be. Fortunately, Thyssen was quite alone on his trip and there were no members of the opposite sex to encourage him in this deplorable behavior.

Five days after his escape he arrived at the eastern gate of Oxenfurt and joined the queue of those who were seeking to enter the city. There was something strange about being next to humans again, about hearing their voices and seeing their gestures. A passing monk asked him for a donation to the almhouse of St. Lebioda and cursed him at length when he refused. An armored knight-errant cut in line in front of him, casting a withering look in his direction as he did so. One of the merchants behind him tried to sell him what was supposed to be a witcher's medallion, dismissing the one Thyssen had around his neck as a worthless trinket. Soon enough, he found himself missing the comfort of his solitary journey.

But it was there, as he waited in line, that he overheard a conversation that was to shape his life for years to come.

Two of the merchants in front of him were discussing a mutual acquaintance, a man who staked his entire fortune on a cargo of spices shipped from Kovir to one of the southern provinces of Nilfgaard. It was a risky gamble but it paid off handsomely, and after many trials and tribulations their acquaintance earned over a hundred-thousand orens. The lucky man retired and purchased a profitable vineyard in Toussaint, where he planned to live happily ever after.

There was an undertone of resentment to the conversation. The merchants traded stories that put their former colleague in an unflattering light, found fault with all the things he had said or done over the years, and happily concluded that fortune never bestows its luck upon the truly deserving. But it was what Thyssen overheard of the land of Toussaint that sent sparks down his soul.

Toussaint, apparently, was the land of wine and honey, where summer reigned almost year round; where the ground was soft as grass and the water that flowed in the rivers as sweet as ale; where the women were elegant and unassuming, the peasants lazy but good-natured. The castles were startlingly beautiful, the vineyards grand and always in bloom, and the dizzying array of shops sold the freshest breads and the most pungent cheeses, the latest silks and the most aromatic spices.

It was a place where valor and chivalry were held in high regard; where people held that your word was your bond and where everyone, from the lowliest peasant to the noblest born, followed a rigid code of kindness and courtesy. The land was ruled by a duchess renowned for her beauty and sense of justice.

Could such a place really exist? If only a tenth of what he had now heard was true, a life of leisure in Toussaint was infinitely preferable to whatever there was to be had in the other northern kingdoms. The only problem was that his available funds fell rather short of a hundred thousand orens. Indeed, when Thyssen finally stepped onto the streets of Oxenfurt, he didn't have a single oren to his name.


	4. Chapter 4

When Thyssen had first decided to journey to Oxenfurt, he did not spend much time planning what he would do once he arrived. He assumed he would find his way to one of the institutions around which the arts of the city revolved; that is to say, either the Academy or any of the theaters that were supposed to be flourishing alongside the embankments of the city. Through these places he would find fellow troubadours and artists; no doubt there would be some men and women of genuine talent and perspicacity among them and, surely, one of them would provide aid and advice to a penniless colleague?

But on the morning that he finally rode through the eastern gate of Oxenfurt, Thyssen ignored the signposts directing him to the Academy and barely glanced at the placards advertising Madame Irina's latest production. Instead, he set his horse to a slow trot through the avenues which ran in circles around the island, occasionally pausing to ask a pedestrian for the location of the closest notice boards. Most told him to plow himself, for at the time the residents of Oxenfurt were not known for their good manners. Nonetheless, with a bit of persistence, Thyssen soon managed to visit all the notice boards within the city.

This did not take long for there were not many of these boards. In that bygone era Oxenfurt had not yet blossomed into its present expansive state. The best Redanians artists of the time were concentrated in cosmopolitan Tretogor and considered Oxenfurt a village indeed, suitable perhaps for a scholar but entirely devoid of the comforts necessary to sustain a creative life.

Few as the noticeboards were, Thyssen was satisfied to see at least a dozen postings advertising problems with ghosts. He read through several accounts of ghostly sightings, each ending with a plea for witchers, mages, or knowledgeable sages to drive the spectre away.

And so he set to work.

His first client was an old woman who ran a tavern at the edges of city. It was a dirty establishment, infested by rats and flies, though none of her boarders seemed to mind much. Her notice complained of a haunting by one of her former lodgers, a Temerian who drank himself to death after a particularly exerting visit to the brothel.

"Right bastard he was," she complained, "still owes me an oren for the room. And now Agota is pregnant…"

She gestured towards her niece, sitting nearby with her hands on a bulging belly and a grave expression on her face.

It took Thyssen some time to comprehend her meaning; and when he did finally understand, he made the mistake of voicing some doubt as to whether it was possible that the ghost impregnated her niece.

"Who else could it be?" the old woman hissed at Thyssen, regarding him with sudden wariness. "Like a hawk I watch her. Never sets foot out of my sight!"

It took considerable effort to calm her down. Thyssen could only mollify her by listening to her niece's account, lengthy and rather explicit, of how the boarder's ghost visited her one night and had his way with her. The man's death, it seemed, did not at all diminish his sexual appetite. In the interests of propriety, my dear reader, I will spare you the sordid details of this story.

The job paid a measly ten orens. Asking for half of the money ahead of time, and after purchasing the necessary supplies, Thyssen spent that evening producing a veritable cornucopia of noise in the Temerian's former room.

The old woman and her niece waited outside the tavern, all the guests having been cleared out for this dramatic event. This time he emerged literally covered in blood - he had made some minor cuts on his arms and embellished them with the juice of Cidarian tomatoes - and he was pleased that, as intended, the two women gasped and shivered with fear at the sight of him.

He treated them to a good story of the battle, recounting the supposed trading of blows and counterblows. An audience of boarders had gathered, most of them poor laborers who took lodgings on the city's outskirts, fishermen, washerwomen, tradesmen apprentices. And so, to his surprise, Thyssen found himself in front of an audience hung onto his every word. He stood in front of the tavern late into the evening, answering the questions the crowd was eagerly throwing at him. His descriptions of the battle flourished over time and the final version bore little resemblance to the initial one but, thankfully, no one seemed to notice.

Once the evening had turned into night and crowd finally dispersed, events took an all-too-expected turn: the old woman refused to pay him the remaining five orens, pleading her poverty, and claiming she did not have the money regardless. It was only after he threatened to give every ghost in the city directions to her tavern that she had managed to procure the coin, all the while cursing at him bitterly.

The full implications of what he had done did not dawn on Thyssen for quite some time. Whereas the story of Agota's impregnation by the dead Temerian had formerly brought forth only jeers and mockery, the tale now acquired credibility; not only had it been validated by a witcher, but it had led to an epic battle, the stories of which were rapidly spreading throughout the city, with many soon claiming to have seen first hand the vicious blows traded by the brave witcher and the fearsome ghost.

And thus, two more cases of pregnancies arising from spectral violations occurred within the next month. In both cases, the victims immediately sent for Thyssen. He charged the first of these fifteen orens, the next one twenty, and took care of it using the same method, to the satisfaction of all involved. He had grown quite adept by now at howling, screaming, and the making of eerie, otherworldly clangs.

And then the cases began popping up with a pleasing regularity. Vainly did the scholars from the Academy proclaim that such things were old wives tales; the more they insisted on it, the more everyone held them to be out of touch. Besides, it was well-known that the scholars were arrogant, that they looked down on the common folk; their opinions on this issue, as well as on all other issues, were cloaked in a tone of condescension that led their listeners to double down in opposition. A few witchers from the School of the Griffin passed through Oxenfurt that summer and added their voices to the scorn of the scholars; but it was of no use. By the time of the next planting season, in the fall of 1269, hardly a week would go by without an incident of ghostly impregnation.

Reader, do you imagine that eventually the truth triumphed, that Thyssen and his clients were found out as frauds? If so, I envy your naivete. Ah, how wonderful it would be to be young again, to have a simple and good-natured faith in the workings of the world! Alas, dearest reader, I regret to tell you that lies that strike at men's hearts always prevail over the truth.

Even the scholars who, for quite some time, made a sport of laughing at the ignorance of the peasantry fell silent once the young daughter of the Duke of Carentan had been impregnated, supposedly by a man the Duke had slain a good half-century earlier. The Duke was a generous supporter of scholarship; not only had he bequeathed much of his fortune to the Academy, but he spent considerable sums each year funding the projects purportedly undertaken by scholars in their free time. Not unaware of the source of their incomes, the scholars began falling mute one-by-one.

Indeed, only weeks later, the more desperate among them began writing tractates on the matter, claiming to find precedents to the recent events in the ancient texts. It turned out that _Eigean Evelienn Deareadh_ , an anonymously-penned Aen Seidhe treatise about the next world, mentioned in passing a certain ghost that could ride a flesh-and-blood horse. If the spectral and the material could co-mingle in this way, who knew what was and wasn't possible? The few scholars who kept on insisting these tales were mere fabrications were made to feel unwelcome and soon found themselves seeking posts elsewhere. Soon enough, everyone but the lunatics who drooled and mumbled nonsense in the streets believed the city was in the midst of an epidemic of ghostly ravishment.


	5. Chapter 5

With trial and error comes expertise. Thyssen soon understood that the ghost sightings, which at first glance seemed as much a feature of the city as its landscape, had four principal causes. The first was, of course, the need to explain away the unintended outcomes of erotic encounters. The boys from the academy, most of them naturally mischievous; the rowdy soldiers who always seemed to be passing through the town; the streets full of maids and servants, many quite lovely, usually wearing tatters which left little to the imagination - all of this had exactly the outcome one would expect.

But there were also more mundane causes. One Thyssen had already encountered on his way to Oxenfurt - loose paneling. A series of wooden planks, not perfectly aligned, will produce a wide-berthed sound in a strong gale, a noise that will change as fast as the wind. You may laugh at this, reader, but I assure you there was no shortage of men who managed to read otherworldly warnings into these sounds.

It was not enough, in such cases, to make some noise and emerge having declared victory, for the problem would only reappear. The loose board had to be found and nailed shut; better yet, it could be broken entirely, perhaps as an unavoidable consequence of the "battle" with the ghosts, forcing the client to fix it at his own expense.

The third cause, which took Thyssen quite a bit of effort to unearth, was a species of magical mold. This mold sparkled and shimmered beautifully in the light of a full moon, and only in the light of a full moon. This damnable fungus caused a minor smirch on Thyssen's reputation, as several places that he had declared free of ghosts teemed with reported sightings later, the glowing moonlight transformed into Gods-know-what kind of monsters. After many failed experiments, Thyssen brought some samples to a few of the washerwomen who made their living on the outskirts of the city, and a cleaning solution which handled it satisfactorily was found.

But the last cause, if it can even be called that, was the most difficult one of all. All over the city, men cheated, stole, and betrayed each other; many a mage was burned at the stake; nonhumans were hanged on the words of their neighbors, the same neighbors who would later appropriate the posessions of the deceased. Historians would later draw an arbitrary line in their chronologies and declare, _here began the Age of Contempt_. Yet even the most evil of men is not bereft of a conscience. It may be hidden, suppressed, out of sight, but it is there, lying in wait to take some tangible form, perhaps that of a ghost come for revenge. Thyssen could nail shut a floorboard or wash away mold but what could he do to relieve a guilty conscience?

"She looks at us when we sleep,'' the townswoman said. Her name was Eliza and her husband, a prosperous and portly fur merchant named Petrus, sat beside her; their voices, though tightly controlled, seemed to be on the verge of an explosion. A few servants were standing mutely at the entrances.

"Looks at you?"

"I see her pale white form when I wake up. It dissolves into mist just as I open my eyes."

"Sometimes I hear her footsteps in the garden," Petrus added. "She used to love walking there when she lived. I hear footsteps but the garden is empty whenever I open the door."

"And then there are my cups," Eliza continued. "I'll be carrying a tray when she'll knock it out of my hands. I can feel her touch on me, the coldness of her hands. She hated my cups. Too floral, she always said."

They were speaking of Eliza's sister and Petrus' former wife, for the two persons were one and the same. The three of them had lived together for a decade before Eliza's sister perished in the Catriona plague, and Eliza married her former brother-in-law a year later.

Thyssen thought it over. He had already inspected the house - no mold, no loose flooring. He had first supposed the footsteps could be the work of neighboring kids; but the garden was too steeply walled. His medallion did not give off even a hint of vibration as he walked from room to room.

He could, of course, make some noise and declare the ghost banished. No doubt all would be well for a time; but the guilty consciences of the people in front of them would give rise to another sighting soon enough and then he would have a very unhappy client on his hands.

He might declare himself powerless. The merchant had offered him a hundred orens to take care of the problem, and though he would be sorry to lose them, his long-term reputation was more important.

His thoughts turned to a group of monks he saw walking through the town gate the prior afternoon. A new order of the Church of the Eternal Fire whose name he could not recall. The monks were clothed in only their loincloths, their emaciated bodies cut to and fro by long gashes, self administered with the whips they carried about them. Some of the wounds were still bloody. The procession made for quite a sight, evincing as much wonder as disgust as the monks proudly paraded their wounds.

And yet what Thyssen remembered the most were the beatific smiles of the men in the procession. Even as the townspeople jeered and laughed, and as some threw rotten food at the procession, the monks never wavered, and the expressions of utter, complete, rapturous happiness never disappeared from their faces.

Making up his mind, he made a gesture as if to stretch. Channeling his energy as best he could, Thyssen poured all of his efforts into his aard.

Across a hall, an empty coat stand which had been leaning precariously toppled over with a sharp clang.

"It's her!" Eliza and her husband rose to their feet in a panic. "It must be."

"Leave the house," Thyssen said, trying to make his voice calm yet laden with a detectable undertone of panic. The couple did not need to be told twice. "Take the servants with you," he added as an afterthought, but they were already out the door with the servants on their heels.

Within moments, he was alone. He stood in silence for several moments, just in case someone was still inside the house; but he heard nothing, only the faint creaking of wood in the autumn wind. Walking through the rooms, careful to check that he could not be seen through any of the windows, he made a effort to to make it seem as if a fight had taken place here: cups strewn on the floor, books tossed everywhere, curtains ripped apart. As was his habit by now, he inflicted a few minor injuries on himself, small bruises and cuts that made him look suitably frazzled.

And then he sat still. After an hour, he ventured outside, where a circle of onlookers had gathered.

"Did you defeat it?"

"Are we safe?"

He motioned the couple to follow him inside the house, away from the prying ears of the crowd.

"I'm afraid not," he replied.

He could see their faces fall. Impatiently, they led him to one of the guest rooms deep inside the house where they could talk privately.

"We fought for a good while," Thyssen said, "but she was simply too strong. Too powerful." He shook his head. "Never have I met a ghost this well-formed, not in my..." he paused "...many years of witchering. "

"Perhaps we ought to employ a more powerful witcher," Petrus said sharply. "Someone who has been witchering, as you say, for a little while longer."

"If you wish," Thyssen answered calmly. "If any other man drives away the ghost, I won't take for a single oren from you, I assure you."

He let the silence linger for a while. "You see," he finally continued, "we had a conversation." He stopped for effect. They were both looking at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Just as he saw they were about to bombard him with questions, he went on.

"We sparred until our energies drained, until it was clear that neither of us could defeat the other. It was only then that she looked me up-and down and began to speak."

He turned to the merchant. "She..the ghost that is...it said that you betrayed her. That you never loved her, not truly."

"Ridiculous!" Petrus retorted angrily. "Twelve years we were together."

"She said," Thyssen continued, "that you were eyeing her sister the whole time."

"Lies," the merchant said, but Thyssen noticed that his outrage seemed to diminish somewhat.

"She accuses both of you of sneaking behind her back for years."

The couple shared an anxious glance before Eliza spoke. "It is not true, master witcher, I assure you. If anything, it was the grief that brought us together. When she had passed away..."

She left her sentence hang in the air.

"I argued with her on your behalf," Thyssen said. "Assured her of your good will. But she would not believe me. "

Eliza put her hands over her face and looked as if she were about to start sobbing. Wary of overdoing it, Thyssen jumped to the bombshell he had prepared.

"But, in the end, we struck an agreement."

That provoked a reaction; for a moment, the couple seemed speechless.

"I told her that your love was genuine and free of ill will. I apologize for the presumption, kind ser," Thyssen added, for indeed it was unclear from what source he would have obtained such a conviction. "But I have much experience with ghosts, and rest assured, it was the right course to take."

"In the end," Thyssen said, "she set her conditions. You are to separate for a year." He turned to the merchant. "You shall remain here in Novigrad, while you, madam, shall spend the year alone at one of your country estates. The two of you must have no contact whatsoever during that time. If you find yourself still in love at the end of the year, your sister will be able to pass into the nether world in peace."

"A year?" said the merchant unhappily, twirling his mustache. But his wife had the opposite reaction.

"But that is wonderful," she exclaimed, putting her hands together. "A year is nothing, nothing at all!"

"Do you think so, my dear?" Petrus said skeptically.

"There is more, I'm sorry to say," Thyssen continued. "You must both take a vow of silence for the last two weeks of that year. You may communicate only with gestures during that time."

"Impossible," Petrus declared, and even Eliza looked taken aback. The merchant a quick mental calculation. "A year takeaway two weeks puts us during the time of the fall harvest, the most lucrative time of my trade."

"I'm afraid," Thyssen said in the most apologetic tone he could muster, "the ghost's terms were not negotiable."

"Very well," Eliza said with a gleam of determination as her husband let loose a string of curses. "We'll do it, darling, won't we?"

There followed a lengthy and somewhat agonizing discussion. Thyssen had remained silent at first, then coughed gently and moved out of earshot to an adjoining room. He left several hours later, a hundred orens richer, with the household's servants already starting to pack Eliza's effects for a lengthy sojourn in the country.

He poured himself a drink when he had arrived home that evening, a strong Mahakan ale that lulled him into a pleasant state of contentment. Did he just save or destroy a marriage? Should he have said six months instead of a year? How much suffering should people be expected undergo for love? Eventually, he managed to convince himself that nothing easily obtained feels truly valuable; that the couple's inner demons can only be banished through hardship; and that if their love cannot survive a year's separation, it was worth little to begin with and he would have done them both a favor. Comforted by these arguments, he finally fell into a light asleep, and on waking up the next morning, groggy and with a minor hangover, he resolved that doubting his decision would produce no good, and he would not dwell on the matter again.

* * *

Reader, I suspect only your politeness restrains you from accusing me of lamentably poor organization. I am not unconscious that, having launched into an account of Thyssen's experience as a witcher, I may have neglected to clarify a number of key points. Where did Thyssen live? Did he long to return to Kaer Morhen? Did he obtain any comrades, traveling companions, or won the heart of a fair damsel? To these pressing questions I now turn.

Thyssen's first impulse was to take rooms in the cheapest inn in town, The Red Lion, which in spite of the regal-sounding name turned out to be an overgrown hut a half-hour past the city walls. The chief thing to recommend it was that the proprietor could be bargained to a mere half-oren a week. But, on reflection, Thyssen decided that an appearance of poverty would not do. One had to spend money to make money. Instead he took rooms in an inconspicuous tavern just past the western gate at two orens a day, clean, sturdy, with a clientele largely composed farmers who came to the city to bargain away their crops.

Fortunately there was no shortage of jobs for Thyssen, and as I have already began to detail, and he soon embarked on a veritable one-man spree to rid the city of its ghostly infestation. Within a few weeks, flush with an influx of coin, he rented a few rooms at the top of the Duke of Bann Glean, a fancier establishment of the sort frequented by passing merchants. Although more expensive, the owner allowed him to unfurl a banner which, as it flopped to-and-fro in the wind, advertised his services to all who went by.

His fame grew, buoyed by a string of apparent successes. He received a fair amount of commissions for witcher's work unrelated to ghosts; many came to him with requests to banish ghouls, drowners, barghests, and other marvelous beasts which prowled about freely during those chaotic times. Naturally he sent them all away, either naming outrageously high prices, or pleading that he had too much work as things stood. If a customer did, perchance, agree to his extravagant price, he would then demand the fee in advance; if even that failed, a bit of "research" on his part would reveal dangers in the assignment previously unrealized, leading to a massive increase in the asking price. One way or another, he managed to restrict himself to ghost-related work without seeming to arouse suspicion.

His services steadily grew more expensive. If at first he had served mainly the fishermen on the wharf and the peasants who labored on the city's outskirts, his clients were now predominantly merchants who did business within the city. A few even came from the aristocracy. In spite of this, when he took stock of his finances at the end of each week, it was clear that he was not growing wealthy fast enough to realize his dream of a vineyard in Toussaint. For he did not abandon his dream; on the contrary, as he heard travelers passing through Oxenfurt full of nothing but superlative praise for that land, Toussaint had grown in his imagination to almost mythic proportions.

Reader, I will not disparage Oxenfurt, or any other Redanian city for that matter. The writings that have passed to us from that time make it clear that the city, although small, dirty, full of beggars, beset by cold and rainy weather, and with bandits prowling its outskirts, was nevertheless charming and beautiful. Travelers often remarked on her streets, paved with uneven bricks; her expansive and wide squares; the labyrinthine maze of red roofs that shone so brightly in the summer their glare could be seen from mountains away. And yet, for some inexplicable reason entirely mysterious to me, Thyssen remained unsatisfied with his lot.

What it was that he wanted, I very much doubt he could say himself; and yet these hopes and dreams took personification in Toussaint, in the thoughts of lazy afternoons spent drunk on grapes lounging in the sun's glare. The problem was that a typical week for Thyssen would involve one or two jobs, with a net profit of a hundred orens or so. At this rate, he would be saving coin for a hundred years or so before he could afford that hypothetical vineyard.

All the same, the work of a witcher-charlatan was not an overly consuming one. He spent a few hours each day sifting through clients and one or two evenings each week were wholly devoted to his craft; otherwise he was free. You might therefore wonder, dear reader, how Thyssen spent his remaining hours.

The answer should be entirely obvious. Thyssen was a healthy boy on the cusp of adulthood. Naturally, he poured all of his energy into, as the men of my generation were fond of saying, "chasing skirts." Unfortunately, he was quite hampered in this endeavor by his complete and utter lack of knowledge of what one ought to do in the presence of the opposite sex.

The stories he heard growing up at Kaer Morhen suggested that merely walking down the street in the armor of a witcher, with two swords at his back, would be sufficient to seduce any woman. One of the witchers who wintered there often - a certain Geralt, not a terribly attractive man, face marred by scars and hair in a ponytail that made him look vaguely equine - often told stories of his dalliances with sorceresses, all supposedly exceedingly beautiful and powerful. According to this Geralt, he barely had to do anything before these beauties threw themselves at him.

But no matter how many times Thyssen strolled down the street with the swords at his back, the only women who accosted him were fishermen's wives looking to interest him in the catch of the day. If anything he seemed to be almost invisible: just one more young boy decked in leather armor, likely a mercenary looking for work among the soldiers which were constantly prowling the city. Occasionally, he would wander into an inn, still in his armor, and recline against a wall throwing cool glances at the drinking and gambling taking place. Here the only women who accosted him were of the sort that wanted payment for services rendered.

Perhaps, he thought, he needed to be a touch more aggressive, to approach some fair maiden strolling about the city and start a conversation. But what could he possibly say?

The books he had read in his Kaer Morhan suggested long and flowery speeches praising the woman's beauty, which seemed like quite reasonable advice. Besides, he had often seen knights in bright plumage and gleaming armor loudly proclaiming poetry in the midst of some public declaration of love within the city's squares.

He would approach a woman buying fruit at one of the stalls into the market; making some small talk about the fresh oranges from Nazir or some such, he would wait for an opening to launch into a sonnet (composed beforehand) on the subject of her great beauty. He spent quite a few evenings laboring on these sonnets, and he thought they flowed rather elegantly. The women looked at him as if he was a lunatic and, seeming vaguely disoriented, sought to distance themselves as fast as they could.

For a while, he thought that his poetry was insufficiently effusive, and even took some lessons from a travelling bard. Unfortunately, what Thyssen neglected to consider was that while such poetic effusions were not uncommon among the aristocracy, where the women typically possessed a courtly education and might be impressed by a rhyming couplet or an unexpected turn of phrase; but the maids who were sent out to shop at the market were not the best audience for his attempts at cleverness. I regret to report that his efforts in this direction failed to produce anything in the way tangible results.

Soon enough he realized a new approach was called for. One night, as he was having his dinner at his inn's lobby, he overheard the conversation of a trio of merchants seated at the next table. Besides learning much about the price of cloth all over the Northern Kingdoms, he found out that, each month, on the night of the full moon, one of the villages outside Oxenfurt held a dance that lasted until dawn. Much alcohol would be served, and the merchants had indulged in some speculations about the chastity of peasant girls, or the lack thereof, which I shall not deign to repeat here.

Visions of tightly-dressed, simple but lovely peasants girls floated before Thyssen's eyes. It would be too much, he reasoned, to attend clad in full armor, but perhaps a couple of swords at his back would not hurt…

He could hardly wait until the next full moon.

When it finally came, and when he had arrived (bedecked in leather armor) in the small hamlet where the dance was held, he found the scene much like he imagined it. Musicians were playing cheerful tunes on lutes, simple and fast music. A few couples were dancing with the wild abandon that comes from drunkenness in the open barns. There were many braziers all around, so much that the bright hue of the village was visible for miles on the road. The air smelled of damp moss, reminding him of his time at Kaer Morhen.

After tying his horse to a tree, he approached one of the makeshift stands to buy a drink.

"Notfromaround'ere, eh?" the seller said in a mildly hostile tone as he took the coin handed to him.

"No," Thyssen said taking the tankard and taking in the scene. He stood aimlessly, slowly sipping his drink, which was as close to pure alcohol as anything he had drunk recently. It took all of his self-control to stop himself from spitting it out.

He was pleased to see a few of the peasant girls shyly eyeing him from a distance, and one even giggled when he asked her to dance. So unlike the well-dressed city girls, who would take one look at either his armor or his clothes and seem to instantly lose interest. Here things were altogether different. Was it the two swords at his back, one of them recently-polished silver? Or was it his his carefully crafted attire, purchased from a tailor not far from the tavern where he stayed, which contrasted so sharply to the unshapely overalls worn by the peasants here? Whatever it was, he was in no mood to question it.

But it was here that he discovered another obstacle to his romantic endeavors, namely that he had nothing whatsoever to talk the peasant girls about.

"Harvestwasgoodthisyear," the first girl he danced said to him after the music stopped and he vaguely hovered about her thinking of something to say. The people here seemed to slur the Common Speech rather than speak it, so that all of their words felt as if they lumped into one.

"Yes," he said. "That's what I hear."

There was a silence.

"Lots of fruits and vegetables collected?" he offered what seemed to him to be the logical continuation of the topic, but she only looked at him a little strangely.

"Your eyes look beautiful in the moonlight," he shifted the conversation onto safer ground.

She smiled, "Thankyaverymuch," she said, her accent so thick that, were it not for context, he would have had no idea of what it was she had just said.

"It's a beautiful village," Thyssen said, looking around at the decrepit houses. "Have you lived here your whole life?"

She nodded. "Iwasbornyonder," she said, pointing to one of the huts not far from where they were standing.

"I'm originally from Kaedwen," Thyssen offered.

"Where?"

"A castle called Kaer Morhen. In Kaedwen." But the girl looked at him with a confused face. After some back and forth, it turned out that she had never heard of any such place. Redania, Aedirn, and Temeria were the only nations she knew of and she was much surprised to learn the Northern Kingdoms comprised of many more countries than these. This momentous revelation did not seem to affect her much. Thyssen had excitedly began to tell her of the various lands of the North and their customs; but he could not go on for long without noticing her manifest lack of interest.

"So what do you do?" he asked after lapsing into a silence.

The question seemed to confuse her. "Ipackhaylots," she said finally.

"Interesting work?" He realized the inanity of the question as soon as the words emerged from his lips. Fortunately, the girl was not offended as much as confused.

"Iguessso," she said.

He was racking his brains for how to proceed when the music started again and another fellow asked the girl to dance. His former dance partner smiled apologetically and accepted, looking slightly relieved.

Things proceeded likewise with each successive partner. There was a flurry of initial interest, and his clumsy dancing did not seem to put them off; but the making of conversation afterwards proved to be rather challenging. He tried to tell the next one about his favorite books, the adventure stories he had read obsessively while at Kaer Morhen, but she only looked blankly at him. He tried asking about her favorite books but it transpired that she did not know how to read.

Not willing to fall down before a challenge, he walked around the festivities until he came across a group of villagers laughing animatedly, three boys and two girls among them. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, he hovered around within earshot, hoping to catch a drift of the topics they found so engaging.

It was not easy, for he only managed to make out two words out of every five; but, eavesdropping awkwardly for some minutes, he made mental notes of several subjects being discussed. These included the abnormally large tomatoes found in this Fall's crop; the insufferable people from the neighboring village in the East, who thought themselves superior because their settlement was larger and possessed a tavern; the recent infestation of abnormally large raccoons that was eating the local walnuts; the dull people from the neighboring village in the North, who were so poor they could barely afford shoes; the coming arrival of a merchant who sold mirrors, lockets, and other shiny trinkets at significant discounts; the departure of the village herbalist who had been found to have been having an affair with one of the headmen and was run out of town by a justifiably angry mob. "Ihopetheyburnheratthestake," one of the older girls said with evident disgust. One of the boys was bragging about his success in selling mole rats, roasted slowly over a fire and marketed as beef, to travellers who spent the night in the village, much to the delight of all his listeners.

Unfortunately Thyssen did not find he had much to contribute on any of these subject.

Feeling a more direct approach was called for, he simply declared, apropos of nothing, "I'm a witcher, you know" to the next girl - a pretty redhead with large eyes who kept shyly looking down at the floor - after their dance was over.

That, at the very least, seemed to produce an effect. "No," the girl said with a smile, "yourejoking."

He raised his palm and a small flame shot of it. She yelped lightly in shock and looked at him anew, with a mixture of fear and fascination in her eyes.

His demonstration did not pass unnoticed. Soon enough, a circle of admirers surrounded him, largely female, looking at the flames that shot out of his hands. A few of them ran their fingers along his palms, rather tenderly saw, as if to convince themselves that his hands were unscathed.

Reader, the next half hour were quite likely among the most exciting of Thyssen's life, for he had the undivided attention of a dozen fair specimens of the opposite sex. Even Thyssen was stunned at the apparent popularity of his profession. He had, perhaps, expected some revulsion, but his small stature and unassuming looks appeared to preclude that.

He first showed them his silver sword, and then began to tell them stories of the ghosts he had supposedly banished. I regret to report that, even forgetting that none of these ghosts were real, these stories were vastly exaggerated. Thyssen was in the middle of describing how he fought an entire army of banshees when he was rather rudely interrupted.

"IbetIcouldtakeyouon," said one of the peasants, an overgrown hulk of a man. Thyssen looked at him uncertainly, unsure how to respond.

"Yeah!" someone shouted.

A few excited whistles were heard, coming mostly from boys who, only a minute ago, were looking resentfully at the attention Thyssen was receiving from the opposite sex.

"Nothingsmorefunthanagoodfight," someone said.

"Alekseyandthewitcher!"

This was not part of the plan. His opponent was at least thrice his size. His fists were almost as big as Thyssen's face. To make matters worse, this Aleksey was looking at Thyssen with unabashed hatred in his eyes.

"Witchers do not fight for sport…" he offered cautiously but this seemed widely ignored. The girls had dispersed the boys were arranging themselves in a circle around him and the peasant. It would be quite embarrassing to flee, especially after having gone on at some length about defeating ghosts.

On the other hand, having his face disfigured was a far more unattractive prospect. He looked for his horse and found him tied to a birch behind a barn some fifty paces away, too far to make a run for it.

Meanwhile people were flocking in his general direction, drawn by the shouts that a fight was about to take place. Thyssen stood helplessly, hoping that whatever passed for the law in this godforsaken place would intervene. Unfortunately, the village headman, easily identifiable by the crowd that had been surrounding him, only looked at the budding scene with amusement as he puffed on his pipe..

He turned his glance to his opponent who was now rubbing his arms together with a grim anticipation, grinning maliciously.

This would not be pretty.


End file.
